Kathryn Newton

            On Christmas morning I finished memorizing “La vie grise” (The Grey Life) by Boris Vian. I looked for the chords but no one has posted them and so tomorrow I’ll start working them out. 

            I didn’t do my usual song practice but just played certain songs I particularly like and some that particularly need practice. I also played the dark verse from “We Three Kings”. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. I had bacon and five-year-old cheddar on a Montreal style bagel with Tzatziki. 

            For lunch I had eight mini-quiches and a beer. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. The streets were pretty quiet but there were lots of pedestrians on Yonge Street. The cops had Yonge Street blocked off for several blocks from Bloor down and so I had to take the lane to the west of Yonge until there were no police cars. I found out later that there’d been a stabbing. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I uploaded my acoustic performance of “The Accordion”, my translation of "L'accordion" by Serge Gainsbourg, to YouTube and posted it on Twitter and Facebook. 

            I downloaded the Greta Garbo montage that had the one clip I needed to match my line, “it brushed against my soul”. I converted it to WMV and imported it into my “Angeline” Movie Maker project. I isolated the clip and tomorrow I’ll insert it into the main video. 

            I started another project called “Lucy Tames the Cat Women” and imported the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies. I isolated the segment in which Lucille Ball is cracking a whip to tame several dancing cat women. Sometime soon I’ll publish it and upload it to YouTube. 

            I made beef gravy and had it with some oven made fish and chips and two beers while watching Ant Man: Quantumania. I found it much more entertaining, action packed and visually interesting than Wakanda Forever. I really don’t understand why it wasn’t as popular. 

            The story begins with Scott bailing his daughter Cassie out of jail. She’s become an activist and she’s also been given some of Hank Pym’s technology. She shrunk a police car down to toy size because the cops were tearing down a homeless camp. 

            She reveals a new invention, which is a mechanism for observing the Quantum Realm. But when Janet hears her say that it is sending a signal to the Quantum Realm she fearfully shouts for her to shut it down. But it’s too late as they and everything in Hank’s lab, including his ants are sucked down into the Quantum Realm. 

            It’s a visually fantastic place with strange creatures. Scott and Cassie become separated from Hope, Hank, and Janet. Janet has never spoken about her many years in the Quantum Realm and even implied that there was barely anything there. But it turns out to be a highly populated and lush world full of strange creatures and she seems to know her way around. She immediately takes on the role of guide and protector for her family. Scott and Cassie are attacked by a sun bright globe with tentacles. Much of the life in this world seems to be modeled on sea jellies. They are attacked by another type and then rescued by quantum people, which was another thing Janet never mentioned. They are taken captive and separated. Scott is panicking because of this and adding to the confusion is the fact that everyone is speaking alien languages he doesn’t understand. Then Cassie calls to him and there is red liquid running from her mouth. She says for him to “drink the ooze”. Meanwhile Janet, Hank and Hope come across people in a desert. Janet steps up to meet them and is attacked with a knife by their leader, but she takes the knife away and cuts off his arm. His arm immediately grows back and he and Janet laugh and embrace like they are old friends. He gives them one of the flying creatures to use as a vehicle. Meanwhile red ooze is forced down Scott’s throat and suddenly he understands what everybody is saying. 

            A red blobby creature comes up to say “Hi” and says, “My name is Veb, you just drank me”. Veb has no orifices and is obsessively interested in how many holes Scott has. Then he meets a human looking guy named Quaz who can read minds but wishes he couldn’t because people are disgusting. They meet the rebel leader Jentorra who also looks human. She refers to “Him” and says that he is The Conqueror and because they come from above like him he will be hunting them. 

            Meanwhile Janet, Hope and Hank fly to a city carved into mountains. Janet opens a complicated door and they enter a bar. Janet orders glasses of ooze for the three of them and now they can understand everybody else. Janet arranges a meeting with Krylar who is played by Bill Murray. Krylar was a freedom fighter like she was but she finds out he now serves the Conqueror. He plans to give them all to Him. 

            Meanwhile when Jentorra hears Scott mention Janet she knows her and says she shouldn’t be there. 

            When the Conqueror’s soldiers come for Janet, Hope attacks and the rest follow. They commandeer of the ships. At the same time the Conqueror’s ships attack the rebel camp. There is a ground fight Cassie joins in revealing that she has a Pym particle suit for shrinking. Scott is surprised but gives her some pointers on how to fight while changing size. The Conqueror’s forces are overwhelming and Jentorra is captured. 

            Scott and Cassie are captured by the leader of the attack, MODOK who turns out to be the mutated and later partly mechanized former protégé of Hank Pym, Darren Cross. Darren was the villain Yellowjacket in the previous story. He was defeated by Scott in the Quantum Realm but found and rebuilt by the Conqueror. It was MODOK who found Cassie’s signal and used it to pull them down.

            Meanwhile Janet tells Hank and Hope about meeting Kang when she was first stranded in the Quantum Realm. He was stranded as well because his multiverse traversing ship was broken, sabotaged by those who’d exiled him. He promised that if his power core was repaired he could take her home. They worked together for years until it finally worked but when Janet touched the core she read Kang’s mind and saw that he had indifferently destroyed trillions of lives and annihilated entire universes. She refuses to go with him and blows up his core to gigantic size so he can’t use it in his ship, thus trapping him in the Quantum Realm and inadvertently causing him to become the Conqueror of that universe.

            Back in the present Kang comes to Scott where he and Cassie are imprisoned. He wants him to retrieve his core and shrink it back down and says he will kill Cassie if he doesn’t. He then almost kills her to show he means business and Scott agrees to help him. Kang says he is the only one who can save the multiverse from what is coming, which is an army of all of the multiversal versions of Kang. 

            Kang takes Scott to the core which is surrounded by a storm and jumps in at the same time as Janet, Hope and Hank arrive in their ship and enter from the other side. When Scott gets to the core he is confronted by first one and then multiple versions of himself. He is in a probability storm with every choice he could make existing all at once. Hope enters the core and faces the same multiple versions of herself. Scott’s possibilities are in chaos until they hear the voice of Cassie urging Scott on and then they all work together to make a mountain of Scotts to raise him up to the core. He shrinks it back down and gets it. Janet arrives and tells him he can’t give it to Kang. Kang arrives and easily takes it.

            MODOK attacks Hank whose still in the ship and it crashes. When Scott and Hope find him he has already been found by his ants. When they arrived in the Quantum Realm his ants passed through time dilation and lived thousands of years in one day, developing into a highly advanced civilization.

            Meanwhile Cassie comes to where Jantella is being held and rescues her. Kang plans to now transport his entire empire and army to conquer the other Kangs. Cassie sends a message to all the oppressed of Kang’s empire to come to the tower and fight. Scott makes himself bigger than he ever has and attacks Kang’s stronghold. He’s under fire by an onslaught of air ships like King Kong on the Empire State Building and it’s too much but then the rebels arrive to help. 

            Veb is among the rebels and while at the front of the charge is shot full of holes. But to everyone’s surprise he is happy to now have holes and it gives him the ability to suck his enemies into his newly acquired orifices and he becomes monstrous. 

            MODOK attacks Cassie and she becomes giant to beat the crap out of him. Then she tells him it’s never too late to stop being a dick. 

            They manage to break the core again just before Kang is about to leave. Kang single handedly forces the rebels back. He easily beats Scott, Hope, and Cassie but then Hank’s giant ants attack and there are millions of them. Kang puts up a force field but MODOK breaks through, now deciding not to be a dick. MODOK dies both a tragic and a slapstick death. 

            Janet temporarily fixes part of the core enough for them to get home. They all go through the portal but Scott who is held back at the last minute by Kang. Kang tries to get through but Scott stops him and they fight. Kang is a better fighter in hand to hand combat. He smashes Scott’s helmet so he can’t use his powers. He beats Scott up but Scott says, “I don’t have to win. We both just have to lose” then he throws Pym particles into the core to destroy it. Kang runs for the portal but Hope blasts him back. He falls into the core as it explodes. But now Scott and Hope are stranded as the portal closes.

            Scott and Hope have a tender moment but what is conspicuously absent is that they don’t kiss in the type of moment when romantic couples would normally do so in a movie. I wonder if it was because they shot this during covid. 

            Anyway Cassie opens the portal and they go home. In a post credits scene we see an arena full of thousands of Kangs. Every variation planning a conquest of the multiverse. 

            Cassie Lang started out as Ant Girl in the comics and then changed her name to Stature. Cassie played a major role in this story and she was played by Kathryn Newton. She started acting at the age of four in All My Children and appeared in her first movie Abbie Down East at five. She began playing golf tournaments at the age of eight. She won two young artist awards for her role in Gary Unmarried. She starred in Bad Teacher and Paranormal Activity 4. She played Claire Novak on Supernatural. She was a regular on the series Big Little Lies. She co-starred in Pokemon Detective Pikachu. She starred in the Netflix series The Society. She starred in the movies Freaky and The Map of All Tiny Perfect Things.